Archive - Dec 2013

Stocks initial knee-jerk "good news is bad news" reaction was a 0.5% plunge in prices and the rest of QE-sensitive assets also reacted in a "taper" way with gold dropping, USD soaring, and bond yields spiking.  But the USD strength implied JPY weakness and that just provided the momo ignition for carry traders to lift stocks 1% straight up as the heads-I-win, tails-you-lose trade continues. Gold has retraced some of its losses but the USD and bonds are stil under pressure as the US open approaches.

US personal income fell 0.1% MoM - missing the +0.3% expectations by the most since September 2011 - but that didn't stop spending which modestly beat expectations at +0.3%. The drop in incomes is the largest (absent the 2012 year-end debacle) since February 2010. Given the disparity, it is hardly surprising that the savigs rate dropped to its lowest since June. So unsaving is the route to freedom once again as borrowing helps drive durable good spending up 0.77%

Last month, the expected NFP print was 120K, instead we got 204K. Today, the expectations was 185K, while the print, was almost an identical 203K, even as last month's was revised modestly lower to 200K. The unemployment rate dropped from 7.3%, which was also below the 7.2% expected, to only 7.0%. The unemployment rate was derived from a drop in the number of unemployed from 11.3K to 10.9K, while the labor force rose from 153.8K to 155.3K, which also led to a modest bounce in the labor force participation rate which rose from a 35 year low of 62.8% to 63.0%.

Below some leading economists and financial commentators give their perspective regarding the risks of bail-ins or deposit confiscation. If you manage money in any way, your own or others,it will be prudent to heed their warnings. 

Today's nonfarm payroll number critical "make or break" margin, as estimated earlier by Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid, is a tiny 30K: "anything above +200k (net of revisions) will lead to a further dip in risk as taper fears intensify and anything less than say +170k will probably see a decent relief rally after a tricky week for markets." Goldilocks of course will be the expected 185K but what economists forecast rarely if every happens. So it is likely that what the BLS reports will either be good for the economy and horrible for market, or vice versa. So we decided to put this 30K in context. The charts below show both the average and the annual seasonal adjustment between the unadjusted and the final, adjusted nonfarm payroll print. In the past decade, the average November seasonal adjustment is the highest of all months, amounting to 1.165 million jobs! In other words, the 30K critical difference will fit nearly 40 times in just what the BLS' Arima X 13 smoothing simulator adjusts the actual print by in order to get what it believes is the appropriate trendline, ignoring entirely that in the New Normal all historical seasonal adjustments are no longer applicable.

• HSBC 165K
• Goldman Sachs 175K
• Bank of America 175K
• JP Morgan 180K
• Citigroup 180K
• Deutsche Bank 185K
• UBS 190K
• Barclays 200K

• Nelson Mandela: 1918-2013 (Reuters)
• South Africans Flock to Nelson Mandela’s Home to Mourn His Death (BBG)
• Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden? Obama says won't choose between them for 2016 (Reuters)
• Fukushima water tanks: leaky and built with illegal labor (Reuters)
• Sears Holdings Files to Spin Off Lands' End Business (WSJ)
• Way cleared for landmark global trade deal (FT)
• U.S. Oil Prices Fall Sharply as Glut Forms on Gulf Coast (WSJ)
• German Factory Orders Decline in Sign of Uneven Recovery (BBG)
• FCC Unlikely to Bless a Comcast-TWC Deal: Regulator (WSJ)

The latest "most important payrolls day of all time" day is finally upon us. Of course, this is a ridiculous statement: considering that the average December seasonal adjustment to the actual, unadjusted number is 824K jobs, it will once again be up to the BLS' Arima X 13 goal-seeking, seasonal adjusting software to determine whether the momentum ignition algos send stocks soaring or plunging, especially since the difference between up and down could be as small as 30K jobs. As Deutsche Bank explains: " today's number is probably one where anything above +200k (net of revisions) will lead to a further dip in risk as taper fears intensify and anything less than say +170k will probably see a decent relief rally after a tricky week for markets. Indeed yesterday saw the S&P500 (-0.43%) down for a fifth day - extending a sequence last seen in September." And then consider that nearly 30 times that difference comes from seasonal adjustments and it becomes clear why "farcial" is a far better definition of labor Friday.

The world has changed immensely and there were once things that were sacrilegiously respected. But, that’s no longer the case.

JGB Futures prices are dropping in a manner eerily reminiscent of the May period of debacle before the BoJ started to regain control. The catalyst for today's biggest bond price drop in 3 months is Takatoshi Ito's comments demanding the Government Pension fund starting greatly rotating from bonds to stocks: "Now is the right time to sell, while the BOJ is buying.”

*JAPAN'S GPIF NEEDS TO START SELLING BONDS, SHOULD REDUCE LOCAL BONDS TO AS LITTLE AS 35%, RAISE JAPAN STOCK HOLDINGS TO 18% NOW, ITO SAYS

Stocks bounced higher initially but are losing most of those gains as bonds hit low prices of the session (and fears re-arise that the BoJ is not in total control after all). As we warned before, the JGB market is "dead" for all intent and purpose and there is simply not enough liquidity to support any significant selling pressure. JGB 10Y Yields are the highest since Oct 1st.

Today, in the latest escalation by minimum paid restaurant workers who demand greater wages, Fast-food workers and labor organizers are set to turn out in support of higher wages in cities across the country Thursday and walkouts are planned in 100 cities, with rallies set for another 100 cities. While it's not clear what the actual turnout will be, how many of the participants are workers and what impact they'll have on restaurant operations, it is possible that your 99 cent lunch may be delayed or outright cancelled today.  While they are of course free to act as they choose, they may want to reconsider since in the very near future you may not even have the option of choosing, as it will be done for you. Earlier this week, restaurant chain Applebees unveiled what may soon be the "Waiter Terminator."

This tragic story emanating from the UK just doesn’t seem to go away. Probably because it’s true. The food crisis across the pond first came to our attention in earnest back in October when the Red Cross announced it was set to provide food aid to the UK for the first time since World War II. The latest twist to this unacceptable saga comes via a letter send by a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities to the British Medical Journal calling it a “public healthy emergency” and accusing the government of covering up the problem by delaying a report on the subject.

Bitcoin and other Internet currencies are viewed by some as a Beanie baby fad and, as Citi's Steve Englander notes, by others as revolutionizing the financial system. Market acceptance of alternative currencies now looks to be growing a lot faster than the pace at which the supply of Bitcoin and Bitcoin wannabees is expanding the Internet money supply. The responses fell into five categories which we feel are well worth considering before trading or utilizing the digital currency (including Bitcoin's role in reserves management - Bitcoin with its inelastic supply and deflationary bias would look attractive to reserve managers as a complement to gold, and in contrast to fiat currencies in unlimited supply.). Among skeptics, a minority think that security is a much bigger issue than proponents admit. However correct the longer-term concerns, there is nothing obvious to derail the expansion of Internet currencies in the near-term, as they are meeting both legitimate and illicit economic and social needs.

Nearly a year ago, we penned "Return = Cash + Beta + Alpha": in which we performed "An Inside Look At The World's Biggest And Most Successful "Beta" Hedge Fund. The fund in question was Bridgewater, and Bridgewater's performance was immaculate... until the summer when the sudden and dramatic rise in yields as a result of the Bernanke Taper experiment, blew up Bridgewater's returns for 2013 and at last check, at the end of June, was down 8% for the year. As further explained in ""Yield Speed Limits" And When Will "Risk Parity" Blow Up Again", an environment in which rates gap suddenly higher (and in the current kneejerk reaction market all moves are purely in the form of gaps as risk reprices from one quantum to another in milliseconds) is the last thing Ray Dalio's strategy wants. Be that as it may, and successful as Dalio's fund may have been until now, tonight James Montier of Jeremy Grantham's GMO takes none other than Bridgewater to task, in a letter in which among other things, he calls risk parity "just old snake oil in new bottles", and sums up his view about the strategy behind Bridgewater in the following equation:

Risk Parity = Wrong Measure of Risk + Leverage + Price Indifference = Bad Idea

and proceeds to skewer it: 'At a fundamental level, risk parity is the antithesis of everything that we at GMO hold dear. " Read on for his full critique.

Bubbles are created when investors do not recognize when rising asset prices get detached from underlying fundamentals, but perhaps George Soros' perspective on bubbles is most prescient: "financial markets, far from accurately reflecting all the available knowledge, always provide a distorted view of reality. The degree of distortion may vary from time to time. Sometimes it's quite insignificant, at other times it is quite pronounced. Every bubble has two components: an underlying trend that prevails in reality and a misconception relating to that trend. When a positive feedback develops between the trend and the misconception, a boom-bust process is set in motion. Eventually a tipping point is reached when the trend is reversed; it then becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction. Typically bubbles have an asymmetric shape. The boom is long and slow to start. It accelerates gradually until it flattens out again during the twilight period. The bust is short and steep because it involves the forced liquidation of unsound positions." Does an asset bubble currently exist?  Ask anyone and they will tell you "NO."  However, maybe it is exactly that tacit denial which might just be an indication of its existence.